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By Ellen BarryTHE NEW YORK TIMES • Thursday September 12, 2013 6:34 AM

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoSAURABH DAS | ASSOCIATED PRESSDemonstrators in New Delhi shout slogans demanding that the four men found guilty of raping and murdering a woman in December be put to death. They are to be sentenced on Friday.

NEW DELHI — Prosecutors asked for the death sentence yesterday for four men convicted of
participating in the rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in December.

“The common man will lose faith in the judiciary if the harshest punishment is not given,” Dayan
Krishnan, a special prosecutor, told the judge in the case, who is expected to deliver the
sentences — either the death penalty or life in prison — for each man on Friday.

“Awarding the death penalty will not end crime in the streets,” Singh said.

Both views represent powerful strains in Indian society.

India has steadfastly resisted efforts to repeal the death penalty, which was codified under
British rule. But it almost never carries out executions, and a 1980 Supreme Court ruling confines
their use to “the rarest of rare cases.”

The gang rape of the young woman in December has provided a test for an ambivalent country. In a
rush of emotion, India’s government amended the criminal code so the death penalty could be applied
in particularly brutal cases of rape.

In a statement to a court official before her death, the victim called for the men’s death.

“They should be hanged, so that such an incident does not happen with another woman,” the
statement read, according to text provided to IANS, a news service.

Prosecutors focused their argument yesterday largely on the disturbing nature of the crime: When
the victim and a male friend boarded a private bus, hoping for a ride home, the men attacked them,
knocking the man unconscious and taking the woman to the back of the bus. They raped her, then
severely damaged her internal organs with a metal rod. They dumped the two on the roadside, naked
and bleeding.

Her injuries were so severe that she died two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.